Will Play For Food

Monday, 8 November 2010

I guess we’re all used to the way music styles seem to come in waves—you hear one new band who sound just like something straight out of the 80s and sudden they all sound like that. One bands grows beards and suddenly they’re all doing it. Suddenly they’re all wearing skinny ties or waistcoats that don’t make it down to the waistbands of their jeans. Shows how, even in a “creative” arena we’re all constantly feeding off each other.

But it’s interesting how these trends seem to affect even the most mundane aspects of gigging in the world of the Great Unsigned.

When I was first playing in London, many bands ago, there were certain conventions about pub gigs: they would usually cost £4, discounted to £3 if you had a flyer, which everyone did. (The flyers were handed out by the bands to their "fans" so this was a way of tracking which bands had attracted which fans; you got paid—if at all—in accordance with this. People seem to have lost interest in "flyer deals", but I guess promotion is all online now.)* There would typically be three bands on the bill. And they all brought their gear: this went without saying. On stage you would have rows of amps in front of each other like shark’s teeth—the headliners soundchecked first with their equipment, then the next band set up their amps in front of those, then the next band in front of those. The band at the bottom of the bill would soundcheck last, and then perform with the least amount of space. After each act played they would peel away their layer of black boxes until the headliners once more had the stage to themselves. I even saw this happen at Wembley Arena.

At the time it never occurred to me to wonder if it would have been the end of the world if they had simply all used the same equipment.

At some point all this changed. Nowadays it’s perfectly normal for one band to bring gear (traditionally the headliners) and let everyone share it, or for different bands to pledge to bring different bits of kit. Perhaps the universality of email now makes it easier for bands to liaise with each other—which of course absolves the “promoter” from organising any of this. A cynic might also suggest that having just one set of backline for all bands means you can now squeeze four, five, six, even seven acts on to one bill, in the hope that each will bring a few more punters. It also means that you don’t have several vans and cars all trying to park outside the venue (London venues always seem to be situated on a traffic island or pedestrian mall or some other place that has been designed to allow zero access for wheeled transport.)

Or perhaps one day a muso had a eureka moment when he realised that the sound the audience hears is ultimately at the mercy of the house PA—the guitar amp will have a microphone in front of it, going into the PA mix. (The bassist doesn’t even get that—the soundman usually takes a signal straight from the instrument, as if bass players can’t be trusted to turn their amps on properly.)** So it doesn’t make much difference which amp you use, or at least not as much difference as the quality of the soundman and the acoustics of the room.

Or perhaps the eureka moment actually came when a guitarist let another guitarist use his amp at a gig—and it didn’t explode! I’m always happy to let other bands use our gear: if I’ve gone to the effort of schlepping it to the venue, lugging it up/down the stairs and setting it up, we might as well get the best out of it by letting it make some more music. And frankly anything to avoid having any more stuff on the stage—which is probably tiny and rotten and about to collapse. I’ve never known anyone to damage an amp by putting Bad Notes through it.

Of course the logical conclusion of all this is for venues to have their own house equipment which all can use. This is beginning to happen—but I’ve never played at a venue where all the drumkit is provided. The drummer always has to bring his own “breakables”. That’s the term they always use. What are “breakables”? It always includes snare drum and cymbals, usually bass drum pedal and sometimes the hi-hat clutch. (This is a lump of metal that holds the top hi-hat in place. It’s small but without it you can’t really play your gig. I have rigged up a replacement with gaffer tape, but it didn’t really work. Unlike the time I made a makeshift snare stand out of an upturned bar stool and some gaffer tape, a work of genius but that’s another story…)

I don’t know who first developed the concept of the breakable, but the fear has spread like wildfire. We are talking about drums here—objects that are designed to be hit with sticks. Yes I’m sure you can break a cymbal by smashing it with a sledgehammer or backing a truck over it, but the same applies to a guitar amp or indeed a guitarist. I don’t get it.

Mark, drummer in the Furbelows, has two cymbals but seldom uses both. Originally this was because he only had one cymbal stand; so he would use one and move it from one side of the kit to the other for certain songs. Eventually this bugged me so much I bought another one for him to use. But increasingly we’re playing at venues where there is a house kit, sans breakables, which Mark brings in a backpack. But he can’t fit the big one in the bag so he still ends up playing with just one.

Some day I’ll invent the cheap, medical grade, disposable cymbal and I shall be a rich man.

* Of course back in those days there was also "pay to play". You "hired the PA" for £60 then took the door money, so if you could bring in 20 people you'd break even. At the time it was considered a scandal and I think the Musician's Union put paid to it, but looking back it doesn't seem so outrageous. Or course the Furbelows would be screwed—and if this is the only option then it's forcing all bands to be promoters too—but if a band does have a following and fancies the challenge it could be quite enterprising.** I'm sure sound guys would rather there were no amps on stage at all. They are there mainly for the benefit of the musicians so they can hear themselves. But only in very small venues will the sound the audience hears be coming principally from the onstage amps. The problem for the sound engineer is that once the gig starts he can't control the balance of sounds coming from those amps, so he would rather they were as quiet as possible, with a mic in front of them going into the PA mix that he is controlling.

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

One surprisingly underexploited development of the wave of burlesque swamping the capital is the idea of a variety show combining the high-end stripping with music, comedy, magic, whatever. I can only think of about three such nights—we played one at the Marquee Club before it went belly-up after one outing—but we've performed a few times at another and we seem to go down well. I guess there is much of the camp cabaret about The Furbelows, so perhaps such environments are our natural home.

Tickets at this event are notionally £10 and there always seem to be quite a few bodies in there, so I recently broached the delicate subject of payment. The promoter spluttered indignantly (or I imagine he did, as this was all conducted in the Modern Way via email) pointing out how he had all these expenses to cover and few punters paid full price and he often lost money on the whole thing. I'm sure this is all true, but I was struck by the fact that the very first reason he gave for not being able to pay us was the cost of paying the headline burlesque performers, and the others too if they'd had to travel.

So it's important to pay the strippers but inconceivable that one might pay anything to a band of four or five musicians?

I don't know if this is based on convention, assumption or financial value—if you can show that the audience is basically there for the tassels and not the tunes, then fair enough, I suppose—but it seems very strange to me. Is this just another example of how we've mutated into a society that expects music to be free? Admittedly there is no burlesque equivalent to MP3 downloads (well, apart from videos, I guess), so live performance is de rigeur—but then they've been saying for years that music is now all about live performance and that's where the money is. Is it? Where's mine?

I guess to each his/her own, but I'm going to go out on a limb here: I've sat through a lot of burlesque dance acts in the last few years and most of them have been crap. Some of these ladies can't even move in time to music, so don't even score as dancers. There have been a couple of exceptions—Vicki Butterfly (see photo) really knows what she'd doing and has some impressive costumes—and some are saved by the wit of the premise. But the majority just seem to be banking on our being thrilled by the fact that they are taking their clothes off for us.* I'm convinced that most are actually doing it for themselves, as confidence-boosting exercises, and often I'll notice that their audience is mostly other women, presumably there for moral support. Which is all well and good—except when they get paid and I don't. (I'm reminded of the scene in Spinal Tap where they see the billboard outside their gig advertising 'Spinal Tap and puppet show'.)

Or perhaps we need to work out a 'Making Your Mind Up'-style garment ripping routine. Then we can charge promoters if we promise not to do it.

(*Maybe I'm over-rationalising this, but it always seems a bit odd when a performer does a routine, ending up in her knickers and a couple of pasties, then comes back later in the evening and does another one. I mean—we've seen her with no clothes on now, so where's the suspense?)

Monday, 13 September 2010

I was ambling along London's South Bank yesterday, which was more than usually busy because of the Thames Festival, and came across a knot of people. From the centre came music, a bit like a steel drum or gamelan. Elbowing small children out of the way to get to the front I found a young, earnestly bearded chap playing something that resembled a cross between a turtle shell and two woks welded together to form a giant lentil. He was tapping it rapidly with his fingers, picking out different notes by striking different spots on the upper domed surface. The resulting sound is actually much purer and smoother than a steel drum—like a bell but also a bit like a harp—and has a dreamy resonance the mesmerising qualities of which were evident by the crowd of slack-jawed onlookers, veritable moths to his flame.

Afterwards I asked him what the instrument was called and he said it was a "hang". That had a sort of south-east Asian ring to it that made sense. I asked him where indeed it came from and he replied, "Switzerland".

Now if you're trying to get your head around the image of an alpine goatherd picking his way through the edelweiss with a small UFO on his back, on his way to steel band practice, think again. There is nothing traditional about the hang—it was invented in 2007 by a company called PANart. As far as I can tell it's basically a steel drum but with the enclosed space forming a Helmholtz resonator (the same principle as when you blow across the top of a bottle). I gather the metal has been nitrided, a hardening that I guess must affect its musical qualities.

Check out this video and you will never look at the pots and pans in your kitchen the same way again.

Tuesday, 31 August 2010

The Cross Kings, ancestral home of The Furbelows' own night, the Cirque de Crème Anglaise, suddenly closed down last month, leaving me scrabbling to find a new venue for the two shows I had already booked—not easy when you’re asking for a specific Friday night in the not-too-distant future. I was extremely lucky to have recently fallen in with Ed Saperia, who runs the Salon d’Été club on Duke Street, and Ed was happy to host the Cirque for the 20th August show I had already programmed.

Now, the Cross Kings was always ideal—more so than I realised until I’d lost it (cliché, I know, but there is truth in many of them). Where else could tweedy fops comfortably rub shoulders with pierced crusties? Within its cluttered, homely rooms it had a relaxed bohemian vibe that perfectly suited the light-hearted, untrendy thing we were trying to do, the spirit of a party rather than a nightclub. Many of us shall miss it.

The Salon is a bit of a different proposition. It has a wonderfully central location, along one side of Selfridges, a stone’s throw from Bond Street tube. And once you get past the dark, nameless frontage you suddenly find yourself in an unexpected tropical paradise. The room used to be a church, given away by the tall, distinctive windows at the front. The DJ booth used to be the organ loft, though the organ pipes at the back of the stage are fake—built by the Furbelows' own front man Alex, as it happens. The high vaulted ceiling is actually glazed, and with this in mind Ed and his team filled the place with tall palm trees, hanging baskets of ivy and a living canopy of vines overhead. A machine constantly squirts out mist, partly for the benefit of the plants but also because it creates cool light effects. There is even one huge spotlight (dubbed the “sun”, I noted on the lighting control computer screen) which shines through the mist and the vines in spectacular rays.

From the beginning the idea was to create a much classier environment than the rich-but-tacky Eurotrash club L’Equipe Anglaise downstairs. They wanted an old-fashioned supper club to attract a sophisticated crowd with a vintage dress sense. (In fact the day after the Cirque I also held the New Sheridan Club summer party at the same venue and Luke, another of the men behind the Salon, told me, as he surveyed the party, that this was precisely how they had always envisioned the venue working.)

Now, the Cirque likes a bit of cabaret in the mix. But unlike the swathe of retro burlesque nights, the idea for us is a mixture of cabaret vamp and theatricality with the humorous, lunatic fringe of experimental pop/rock music. Whereas the Salon’s usual musical fare is aimed at creating a recognisably period style, we’re not trying to create something recognisable at all (sometimes not even recognisably music). Moreover, it can get a bit noisy.

To cut to the chase, I think we got away with it. The Salon’s walk-in crowd were doubtless not expecting anything quite like it, but we started gently enough with the wonderful No Cars—the only band so far to play the Cirque more than once. Normally a three-piece they had recently lost another drummer (allegedly she was sacked because she got a boyfriend, but you can never believe anything that lead singer Haruna says on stage). So they had reworked their material for a two-piece, with Haruna and Sachi taking it in turns to bang the drums as well as their usual guitar, bass and vocal chores. I particularly liked Sachi’s bell-laden anklets with which she could tap out the rhythm in a way that was musically surprisingly effective.

As usual the band illustrated their songs with inept cartoons displayed on a music stand. But this time we were also treated to a silent figure in a blank white mask who stood at the back of the stage and swayed to every song, waving a racoon glove puppet on one hand. On the song about tuna, he also produced some cut-out tuna fish on sticks.

The inter-song banter is a key part of any No Cars gig—Haruna plays up the Japanese naïf image, usually claiming to have flown over from Tokyo for that gig and alleging that the band met at school, on a farm or while working as geishas. This time she also insisted that they thought the gig was in North Korea but had been misinformed. Noting that the supper club crowd were getting on with their meals, she offered, “Oh, I see that everyone is eating. I hope we don’t make you puke.”

Next up were the Furbelows. We enjoyed ourselves and I think it went well enough, doubtless dividing the room. I am told that we were rather loud—during soundcheck I saw one waitress jamming her fingers in her ears while a two-piece band were on, so who knows what they made of us. But I did get some positive comments afterwards so I think it was fine, even if, in his stalking and flapping about the stage Alex managed to kick out Neil’s guitar cable—twice.

The Lovely Eggs are a husband-and-wife duo, he playing drums she thrashing guitar and both singing. I love their stuff, sort of playground philosophy set to nursery rhyme melodies; it combines the deceptive (and actually quite profound) simplicity of Talking Heads with tunes that might not be out of place in a football chant but which therefore stick in your head. I can’t understand why they are not bigger. For their song about an olive, Holly came down into the audience and stood on a chair: one of the drunk Japanese party at the table took the opportunity to look up her skirt. Not sure if that means they liked the act or not.

Final act of the night was The Henry Road, a full-on psychedelic rock act. Here, I have to admit, I think we lost the audience. Perhaps at the Cross Kings this would have been just the way to end the evening but for the supper club crowd this was just too Rock, with neither the intimacy or quirkiness of No Cars and The Lovely Eggs.

Ah well, we live and learn, and I am so glad that I got to do a Cirque at this amazing space—not least because it is closing down in a week’s time. I’m told that Selfridges have bought the whole block to develop it. Mind you, there was always a suggestion that the Salon was a “pop-up” club, there just for the summer (there’s a clue in the name), so perhaps some people, at least, always knew it would come to an end now. In any case, it was a noble venture and I sincerely hope the owners bring the same idea alive somewhere else.

Now, where am I going to hold the show I’ve got programmed for 12th November..?

Thursday, 22 July 2010

It's been a relatively quiet time for us recently, but we did have a burst of uncharacteristic energy at the beginning of this month when we played Elysian Nights, at Dirty Dick's on Bishopsgate, and then the Water Rats the very next night. And the two gigs could not have been more different.

The idea behind Elysian Nights is to put on a show combining bands, comedy and burlesque, all with a vaudevillean twist. Given the, ahem, theatrical nature of the Furbelows, this sounds right up our street, and is not dissimilar to the feel of our own Cirque de Crème Anglaise (although I have so far eschewed burlesque—it is everywhere these days and I have seen enough pasties to last me a lifetime). In fact it is also reminiscent of one of the very first gigs we did: a thespian friend of Alex's, who is frankly obsessed with Peter Cook, started up a variety night at the Marquee Club; again, a fun idea combining, comedy, magic, burlesque and rock music. But it was made more complicated by the fact that the whole show was an homage to a (fairly obscure) TV series that Cook made in the 1980s, where Cook played the grumpy, foul-mouthed owner of a club in which a weekly show was taking place. So Alex's friend attempted to remain in character all evening, abusing the customers and telling everyone to f**k off (while presumably inside begging them to stay and make his night a success). Strange. Eventually he broke character and explained what he had been up to, but I think most of the audience left pretty mystified. Anyway, shortly after that the club closed down for the umpteenth time—I think that had actually been the seventh incarnation of the famous venue.

Elysian Nights has no such high-concept pretensions. You get one of the co-hosts doing an acoustic music set and the other one playing comedian MC practising picking on members of the audience, as comedians seem to feel they have to. You get a couple of—as I say, vaguely theatrical—bands and number of women taking their clothes off. But what I think they have done so well is to create a unified flavour to the evening (something I try to do with the Cirque as well). Aside from Alex's girlfriend Sarah (who had rather a heated stand-off with the MC about whether she should move up to the front seats or remain skulking at the back—she refused to be brow-beaten by a clown), not one person had specifically come to see us. I'm fairly sure that many had just come in to see what was going on although, at £10 a ticket, they may have been friends of the naked ladies.* Yet they paid attention, whooped and cheered and I received a number of compliments afterwards so they must have enjoyed the show.

This is the fantasy of being in a band: you play to strangers who love you and become fans. Everyone has a great night and you feel you must be going somewhere.

Sadly the reality is all too often like the gig we played the next night.

The Water Rats is a grand old place. It's technically The Water Rats Theatre Bar if you look at the sign on the front, and is next door to the Grand Order of Water Rats, a charitable association of people in the entertainment business. The performance space is indeed a little theatre stage and has the edge on many venues in that there is a genuine backstage area with access to the stage—pretty rare at our level (you normally "come on stage" by clambering out of the audience). Its musical pedigree is impeccable, having hosted Bob Dylan's UK debut in 1962 and also one of Oasis's first headline gigs. Even now they get some impressive names into that modest space. But in between that the current promoters, Monto (they even insist upon calling it Monto Water Rats), fill in by jamming six or seven bands on in a night.

It's the classic example of dispiriting "promotion". The acts have nothing in common (Monto are seldom even able to tell you in advance who else is playing) so there is no sense of an overall "show" being put together. The idea is that each band brings "their" audience and the promoters hope that this will all add up to enough bums on seats (or shoes on sticky floor) to earn them some money. (Not that the word "promoter" should imply that they promote the event in any way—this is entirely up to the individual bands; there isn't even a single Facebook event or anything like that.) Monto are among the most venal: they make no pretence of even being interested in music, let alone your music. All they ask you—and they keep asking you—is how many people you are bringing. In fact the only reason they asked us to play is that the last time we appeared there we apparently pulled about 18 people, which is frankly quite an achievement for us.

What makes it all the more depressing is that the live music room is separate from the front room with the bar, and during the performances the promoters close the connecting doors. I used to think that this was a noise abatement issue, but in fact they have a DJ playing in there too. (The message being: "Yes, I'm afraid there is a band playing in the next room, folks, but don't worry; we'll just turn up the music in here and you'll never even know they are playing.") They do have TV in the bar showing (silently) what is happening on stage, but on this occasion it was actually tuned to the World Cup.

Well, the long and the short of it is that for the most part our audience consisted of one girlfriend (Mark's this time). A couple of other souls came in for part of the set, but they clearly felt a bit self-conscious, as you have to make a definite decision to leave the pub area and come in there. Quite probably the smallest audience we've ever played to. Even our sound engineer kept nipping out to check the footie score.

Who knows how many of the members or fans of the other six bands might have liked our music if they'd heard it? It may be that they all relished the opportunity not to listen to the other acts, but I feel the layout of the place and the attitude of the promoters encourages this sort of divisiveness. A member of another band even had the audacity to come in only as we were packing up and ask Neil, our guitarist, if he could borrow Neil's instrument (had he just forgotten to bring one? Don't laugh—Alex has actually done that).

In case you're wondering, yes I did see the other bands, or at least until I had to leave to catch the last tube (I don't know how late they went on). In fact as I arrived a solo singer/guitarist was performing to half a dozen of his friends and he personally thanked me from the stage as I came in to watch.

Incidentally, something I learned from one of the Elysian Nights promoters was the story behind the name "Dirty Dick's". Back in the 19th century the basement room, where we were playing, was actually let as accommodation, to a couple. When the wife died (or left, the guy wasn't sure) the man just shut himself away. He kept paying his rent so the landlady left him to it. But when he himself died it was found that he had changed nothing since the day the wife went. Nothing had been cleaned and a thick layer of dust caked every surface (hence Dirty Dick). He had failed to feed the cats, who had died and desiccated—you can still see the mummified animals, along with other detritus, in a display cabinet round the back. Apparently, Charles Dickens heard this tale and based the character of Miss Havisham on it,

True story.

Oh, and I also learned that if the police close off Bishopsgate, the mesh of one-way streets round there collapses completely. After about an hour of puzzling (it was a bit like the Crystal Maze) the closest I could park with a carload of gear was two streets away. Fortunately I was saved by a posse of native bearers, in the form of the other band, The B-Movie Vampires, without doubt the friendliest vampires I have ever met. (Last time we played with them they helpfully painted trickles of blood from the corners of our mouths.)

*By which I mean literally friends of these ladies, not "Friends of the Naked Ladies" in some euphemistic sense, like being a "Friend of Dorothy" or a "player of the pink oboe".

Thursday, 10 June 2010

Years ago I hatched the idea of having an armchair and a standard lamp on stage: before the band went on, a friend of mine, who frankly had no interest in music at all, would wander on, settle himself down and open a newspaper—which he would continue to read throughout the set. Only after the gig was over would he fold his paper, turn out the light and leave. The idea was to have something which both drew the attention with curiosity and expected meaning and at the same time undermined the idea that anything important or out of the ordinary was happening on stage at all.

Well, the idea amused me. The fact is that what goes on on stage is put on a sort of pedestal; and if you're going to stand on stage you must accept that you are being looked at—and that that is part of the job. How you respond to that is a very personal thing, be it through a cool, slick sneer, outrageous costumes, self-effacing silliness or an attempt to channel whatever the music is about. Or making a point of scarcely moving at all—hell, Miles Davis got away with turning his back on the audience, although possibly that was because he was already Miles Davis.

Another notion was to have two big flip charts on stage: before the performance you can wander among the audience asking them to suggest words at random, which you write down on the pages. Then, when the gig starts, you can turn a page on each flip chart at the beginning of each song. With any luck the random combinations of words will inject whole new perspectives on the songs, in an interactive, found-art sort of way.

The first time we played at The Good Ship in Kilburn we were struck by the enormous rear wall at the back of the stage and the projector that was directed at it. Oddly, I've never seen a band make use of this, but it gave us the idea of having a "Furbelows AGM" gig. Our drummer Mark, who works in the City and probably does this sort of thing for a living, started knocking up a PowerPoint presentation, a couple of slides of which I've included here. Sadly he never completed it, though I'd still like to follow through on this idea.

But the problem with all these on-stage wheezes is that they assume you have the space, equipment and cooperation of the management, promoter and sound guy. The reality is that the world of the Great Unsigned is less like a platform for butterflies to show off their colours and more like a cloud of flies clustering around a dead animal. Some promoters feel they need to process five or six bands a night and you're lucky if you get a meaningful sound check, let alone a chance to arrange pyrotechnics or a hydraulic coffin to spring out of in the first number. And it's amazingly how a stunt can fall flat and undermine you if it's not deftly done.

Years ago, in another band, we'd hired a hand-held strobe light. The idea was that during a particularly moody instrumental break in the set, the engineer would kill all the lights, leaving just our strobe. When the moment came, the singer grabbed the lamp and wove around the stage, playing the light artistically on the other musicians. But the stage lights failed to dim, leaving the effect largely unnoticeable. It turned out the engineer had misunderstood his cue: and as we launched into the next song, then every went pitch black. (I was playing a fretless bass in those days, and I discovered that it is impossible to play in the dark by touch alone…)

I was recently at a show at the newly opened—and rather beautiful—Salon d'Été, upstairs at L'Equipe Anglaise in Duke Street, and there was the ubiquitous dose of burlesque. One performer's backing music cut out 45 seconds in, leaving her with the dilemma of giving up, carrying on without it, or restarting. She did the latter—and at the same point the music cut out again. They managed to get it to work in the end, but you could tell she was simmering with ire. This was Vicki Butterfly, one of the best burlesque performers I've seen (and armed with some extraordinary costumes), but even she was stymied by the fact that if one technical element goes wrong the whole illusory bubble can burst.

Mind you, I think much of it depends on the honesty and conviction of how you do it. We had the mighty Tim Ten Yen at our own Cirque de Crème Anglaise night last month; I'd never seen him perform before and was quite taken. His slick yet mysterious pop songs would stand up perfectly on their own, but he augments this with strange angular dances, jogging, pointing and stretching like David Byrne crossed with Mr Motivator. None of this is explained. On top of that he dresses in a sober suit and tie. What makes it work is that there is not a hint of self-consciousness: this is no stunt, gimmick or fabrication—it's just what he does.

I always enjoy watching Paul Hawkins and Thee Awkward Silences, and you know there will be an eruption of odd costumes, masks and flying cuddly toys (I saw one set where Paul sang the first song with a rubber horse's head over his own; I was later told by a member of the band that Paul is actually allergic to the latex and had to time it carefully to get the mask off before his face swelled up and exploded). This is pretty ramshackle as stage antics go, and I've no idea how much of it is even planned, but again it's so unselfconscious that there isn't really any way it could go wrong.

I suspect that a lot of the time you have to be realistic and accept that you are playing in a pub, with all that that implies. And I also suspect that attempts to fabricate a "stage show" because you feel you're not interesting enough and ought to have one are liable to end in tears and accusations of wankerism. But if you go about it with conviction, honestly expressing whatever it is you are trying to get across to the audience, just as with your music, then you can put in a riveting performance, even in the pokiest, most sticky-carpeted pub.

Friday, 21 May 2010

Following hotly on from yesterday's post (thanks to those who sent me their contributions), the same friend has just emailed with another task.

This one I confess I'm struggling with. He wants album titles (exclusively British ones at that) that are seemingly incomprehensible but have an interesting story behind them. Examples he gives are Disraeli Gears by Cream (apparently a mispronunciation by a roadie of bicycle "derailleur gears") and Pink Floyd's Ummagumma (allegedly slang for sex).

So far I haven't been able to think of anything that quite fits the bill. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts sounds a bit mysterious but is just named after a book. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake is just an imaginary tobacco brand referencing the tradition of keeping one's stash in a tobacco tin.

Although this latter example makes me think that an interesting list for the book might be to gather together all the British song and album titles that are elliptical references to drugs and drug taking—a huge and controversial corpus. (Golden Brown, Brown Sugar, Ebeneezer Goode, erm, Puff the Magic Dragon, etc.)

Or, for something more challenging, how about British songs that make elliptical references to masturbation? I could only think of two off the top of my head—Turning Japanese by the Vapours and Pink Thing by XTC. Oh, and I'm told that Teenage Kicks by the Undertones is also about wanking.

A brief search of the internet, however, also throws up Pump It Up by Elvis Costello, Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol, Blind Vision by Blancmange, St Swithin's Day by Billy Bragg, Desperate But Not Serious by Adam Ant, Far Too Hard by Dead of Alive, Close to Me by The Cure, Every Day I Die by Gary Numan, Hit It by The Beat, Lift Me Up by Howard Jones, Eve's Volcano (Covered With Sin) by Julian Cope, Touching Me, Touching You by Squeeze, Mother Fist by Marc Almond and Sat in Your Lap by Kate Bush. Some of these may need verification…

Incidentally one such online list had a post by someone alleging to be the Undertones' manager, insisting that Teenage Kicks is not about wanking and demanding it be removed from the list. I wonder how much of his time he has to spend doing that.